Oregon Chardonnay: Why more diversity of clonal material is needed

Chad Stock had no intention of making a Chardonnay until he discovered some of the fruit that comes from plant material outside of the family of Dijon Clones. Here he describes the process of finding the fruit that he wanted to explore, including old Wente, Monte Eden and Entav Musque Chardonnay clones.

On the same subject is John Paul of Cameron who says that “Dijon Clones are a bad joke perpetrated on the OR wine industry”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ1t48eV94c&index=1&list=PLddUmDhg4G_JdMnhyRIfi9ieTA8XUQ_sP

See all of our videos with Chad Stock of Limited Addition Wines here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLddUmDhg4G_Kg1oas7H6T8BISEMPcWoK_

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Text of Video:
In 2012 in the spring when I was looking at sourcing fruit for minimus. I was offered an opportunity work with some really rare fruit that’s here in the Willamette Valley. Some Chardonnay from the Johan Vineyard that is based on old Wente selection cuttings of the virused, pre, non heat-treated selections, and then also with Espigette, which is a Mersault cutting that was isolated through the University of Montpellier, as well as an Entav selection of Musque Chardonnay Clone 809. And I hadn’t really intended to make a Chardonnay. It wasn’t even on my radar I didn’t want to deal with it. I’m just not excited about Dijon Chardonnay in general and since the opportunity came up I thought I’d look into it. So I started doing some homework about what producers who are doing. I bought bottles from all the best producers in the area and tasted, and tasted them all blind and found consistently that the wines that I like the most, that I felt achieved…the grandest experience of Chardonnay in Oregon were all based on material that was not brought over from the University of Dijon. So Draper clone Chardonnay, for example, is an old one that was planted here in the 70s in Oregon…Some of the heat treated versions of Wente like Clone 108 as we call it here in Oregon, and then some suitcase cutting some various things like Mt. Eden Chardonnay and such heirloom stuff the came here from California. So I realized, “Wow! these are really fantastic!” And all the while these wines have been here and I hadn’t really paid attention because I was off doing other things. So it draws so much attention, to me, that immediately I thought okay actually I think I could make a Chardonnay that I would really be happy with, that I would really love to make. And I realized after digging and doing the research that this fruit was really rare so I thought this is a really grand opportunity that fell in my lap. I’d be stupid not to gives it a shot, so I went for it. And then on the other side of things aside from personal preference and just feeling enlightened that I could make a Chardonnay that I thought would be would be great, I also saw a sort of political window on opportunity for me to be able to i think address something that i think is is really important here right now in Oregon which is addressing sort of the lack of diversity of genetic material here for Chardonnay.